Episode 1: What Is the Literary Life?
Welcome to the Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins! In this inaugural episode, Cindy and Angelina introduce the podcast and what they mean when they talk about having a “literary life.”
Angelina and Cindy discuss how stories have shaped their personal lives, as well as how they believe stories have the power to shape culture.
Listen to The Lit Life:
The Truisms
His father gave him a box of truisms
Shaped like a coffin, then his father died;
The truisms remained on the mantlepiece
As wooden as the play box they had been packed in
Or that his father skulked inside.
Then he left home, left the truisms behind him
Still on the mantlepiece, met love, met war,
Sordor, disappointment, defeat, betrayal,
Till through disbeliefs he arrived at a house
He could not remember seeing before.
And he walked straight in; it was where he had come from
And something told him the way to behave.
He raised his hand and blessed his home;
The truisms flew and perched on his shoulders
And a tall tree sprouted from his father’s grave.
by Louis MacNeice
Book List:
An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis
The Stone of Victory and Other Tales by Padriac Colum
Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay
Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Joseph Pieper
Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
Connect with Us:
Find Angelina at https://angelinastanford.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/
Find Cindy at https://cindyrollins.net and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/
Jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let’s get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB
2 Comments
Alison Kemple
Loved the podcast! Thank you for caring so much that you would do this.
The poem at the end absolutely slayed me. I cried a bit as only a parent can who hopes for their children. Angelina, your fiance’s reading was lovely.
Katie Fisher
I think Elizabeth Gaskell is a bit better known here in the UK. There’s been at least one television dramatisation of her work. I was the geeky teenager who spent all her time reading classic novels, but I probably read at least 4 of Gaskell’s books before I went to university. I think the first might have been her biography of Charlotte Bronte, which I picked up at the Bronte museum in Howarth. I’m looking forward to reading some with my children when they’re a bit older.